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Monday, May 11, 2015

Adventures in Chalk Paint

A few weeks after I started my job, I was pulling up to work and noticed a hodge podge of wooden furniture including a crib, a broken table and a bedside table. At this point I was just furnishing my apartment and looking for the cheapest things I can find. It was super weird that this stuff had been sitting in front of my office building, but this bedside table looked sturdy so I took it home. It was in good condition, but didn't match my design ideas at all. It's much more old school and I hated the hardware.

Before and After

I went to a local store and bought yellow chalk paint, wood filler, new hardware, sandpaper and antique wax. The first step was taking off the old hardware and filling in the holes with wood filler. The new hardware was slightly longer than the old one. I ended up doing two coats because the first one dried with some air bubbles. There was a few little chips in the piece so I also put some wood filler on them (top of the drawer in the picture below.) After it dried, I sanded it down to make it flush with the drawers.

The top of the table had some bubbles in the varnish so I knew I wanted to paint it. I saw a bunch of chalk paint tutorials and that looked like the easiest option. Even though chalk paint is said to not need sanding, I sanded down those bubbles so I wouldn't feel them through the paint.

After sanding and and filling in the holes and bumps, I got to painting! Chalk paint is super thick so it doesn't require a primer. My piece was pretty dark so the first coat barely covered it. It only took 30 minutes to dry between coats so I was able to get two more done that day for a total of 3 coats.

It's not perfect. Since it was so thick it tended to drip, but not until I had walked away to let it dry. There are few paint drips towards the bottom, but I'm going to leave them for now. I really like how the lighter paint really accents the different curves of the wood. It definitely brightens up my bedroom. Not too shabby for a free bedside table!